This week has been an interesting mix of filling space and allowing for the space. I know one thing, space creates a ravenous hunger which I've been filling with a lot of reading material, research, and time with my family. We watched Star Wars Episode IV as a family the past two nights. I forgot how good and cheesy that movie is...how sappy Mark Hamill was as Luke Skywalker and how stunning Harrison Ford was even in his first movie. By the way, did you know Luke Skywalker played the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series!?!? That is growth indeed.
In fact, that is a perfect segue to something I've been pondering the past couple of days. I'm a writer...a fairly young writer in the scheme of things. When I put my thoughts down in these blogs and then send them out to all of you, sometimes I feel like I'm really hanging out there. In fact, I would say that this is one of the deadliest foes I face in writing these posts.
When I look back on my journals from ten years ago, I see a naivete and idealism that can sometimes bring me to a full on blush, which is no small feat these days. I read what I wrote about myself and about God, and I shake my head in wonder at how far I've come. This is a great thing when it's me reading my own journal entries ten years later. It's a bit of a different breed when you're talking about writing for public consumption, wondering what people are going to think ten years from now about the things I wrote about, what I'm going to think about what I wrote.
This new perspective on writing as an art form has given me so much more grace for leaders in all spheres. I have had so many transformational experiences in the past two years that I definitely understand that I must allow within myself and others the possibility for growth and maturity and a change in perspective.
This is the focus of my prayer life this week. That I would learn to live in the grace of accepting everything about today's reality while at the same time leaving plenty of space for tomorrow's reality to come forth from the seeds that I planted yesterday. Tightrope walking is a skill I am going to master in my life. Here's an excerpt from a book I'm reading about this very topic.
"One of Jesus' favorite visual aids is a child. Every time the disciples get into head games, he puts a child in front of them. He says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he's talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child. It's the same reality as the beginner's mind. It's so hard to go back, to be vulnerable, to say to your soul, 'I don't know anything.'
"Try to say that. 'I don't know anything.' We used to call it
tabula rasa in Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. By and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the grace of the beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind men, 'I want to see.'" ~
Everything Belongs (Richard Rohr, 1999)
Yes, I am embracing my inner child today, allowing myself to make mistakes, to write things I won't believe in ten years, to wax eloquent and stand on my soapbox about issues that won't matter to me later, to ponder the hard questions and allow them to answer themselves in a kazillion different ways over the remainder of my lifetime. To find and encourage you to find "the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are, [and thereby learn to understand that it is] only when we live and see through God can 'everything belong.'" ~
Everything Belongs
In Peace & Joy,
Angela
For photo credits, click the links below. The captions represent the search terms I used to find the pictures on Google Images.
I greatly enjoyed your article, Honey! If we're too hyper-critical, we won't do anything!
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to "put yourself out there" as a writer. I've done it for years and still find myself struggling with insecurity every time I write anything for public consumption. You take a chance being vulnerable, opening yourself to criticism and disagreement. But I agree, like little children, we must take that chance. And it's OK . . . we don't have to be perfect. We only have to say "yes" to the Voice inside compelling us to write.
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